Starry Night
by Hawki
Summary: Oneshot: Curiosity has always been part of the human psyche. If someone loses it, do they become less human? Can they regain it?


_This fic is loosely based on the flashback that's featured in the recent Halo 3 ad. The characters are probably slightly OOC but I wouldn't say that it's anything drastic. Note that the events of 'Illumination' are referenced. It isn't nesecary to read the story but it'll allow a greater understanding of this one._

Disclaimer: I don't own Halo nor its characters.

Starry Night

**2351 hours, 8th October, 2517 (Military Calendar)**

**Epsilon Eridani System, Reach Military Complex**

**Planet Reach**

It's said that innocence is a feature of one's existence that is inevitably lost over time, standing in contrast to a virtue such as knowledge. Intitially, one may be under the illusion that the galaxy was a bright and happy place, that all people had the best interests of others at heart, where simply being polite and asking for an item was always a better course of action than stealing.

Of course, as time went by, such an individual would begin to gain a greater understanding of their world and later, human civilisation as a whole. They would begin to see that existence wasn't an entirely rosy affair, that what was right and wrong wasn't as clear cut as previously thought, that not all problems could be overcome through determination alone. Innocence was nothing more than a delusion to shield children from the less appealing factors of their existence.

At first glance, one would have thought that the two six year old children lying in the grass on the outskits of the military complex would have still been in one of the initial stages of innocence. Of course, that was going by initial impressions only. One may have seen that the way they looked up at the night sky was different from many others of their age, the starlight not only coming from the bodies of plasma light years away, but coming from their eyes themselves in a sense. The light of a greater understanding than one would expect.

There was also the fact that their names were stencilled onto the clothing they wore; John-117 and Kelly-087. Perhaps one may have been deluded into thinking that they were simple temporary numbers to aid in identification. Such a person would have been solely mistaken; they weren't additions to their names, they were now part of them.

The two children had begun to understand this. Their intellects were highly developed for those of their age and already their innocence was drasticly lower than one would have expected. Such was the nature of the Spartan II program; the facets of emotion had to be surpressed as quickly as possible in order to produce more efficient soldiers. After two weeks, the initial stages of such an aim had already been accomplished. Resentment was now practically non-existant and dedication to their purpose was rising.

Of course, this wasn't a case of complete eradication of unwanted facets. Clearly the two children had enough innocence left in them to sneak out of their barracks, watch the stars and wonder what was up there. Or at least John did. He, Kelly and Sam had become close friends over the past two weeks but given the nature of the ardourous training they had to go through, all three possessed quantities unknown to their counterparts.

"Do you ever wonder what's up there?" asked John eventually. One could only find out so much about another when both were silent and it seemed best to find out through an authentic question.

"Hmm? Like what?" asked Kelly. What was there to wonder about? Lessons at her old school and those with Deja had taught her what filled the galaxy; massive balls of plasma called stars with smaller celestial bodies along with dark matter and dark energy, having been proven to exist in the 21st and 22nd centuries respectively. Apart from that, there was little out there. Space was essentially a vacuum.

"Maybe someone out there is wondering what it's like here." Clearly John was refering to that which had been always sought but never found, the Drake Equation having been full of empty promise. Not that it ever deterred humanity though. SETI was still functioning, monitoring stations spread throughout the outer colonies and in space itself. The search would never stop until either first contact was made or humanity lost the drive that he'd possessed ever since he stood on two feet and stared up into the night sky-the desire to explore, to discover, to travel…John ceartinly hoped that it would be the former.

"I guess," said Kelly softly, not having really given the subject much thought in recent times. Still, she reasoned that a two word answer was hardly appropriate when talking to a friend. She turned to face John; "Do you think we'll ever meet them?"

"I hope so," said John, still looking up at the stars. He knew that it wasn't a real answer to Kelly's question but he didn't care. Hope was something that you had to hang on to, even at the expense of fact, in this case, that it was unlikely that extraterrestrial life existed. Hope made a far better substitute to disillusioning facts.

He turned to Kelly; "Don't you?"

Kelly didn't answer. Perhaps she had had similar hopes once, but they seemed to be little more than memories now. It was an odd thought, but hope seemed like little more than an indulgence, an escape from the harsher facts of life. Perhaps she'd lost a sense of yearning and hope altogether, due to the utilitarian nature of the training. Still, that didn't make her any less human.

Did it?

**0457 hours, February 12th, 2535 (Military Calendar)**

**Lambda Serpentis System, Jericho VII Theater**

**Of Operations**

The Master Chief stared up at the night sky, no longer wondering what was up there. He didn't have to as the faint images of fire and plasma told him what was above the planet; death and destruction. The balls of plasma directly above them were far more violent and short lived than those further off.

Not that that was inherently a problem in itself. What _was_ the problem was that the death and destruction was notoriously one sided, namely the UNSC ships being almost wholly on the receiving end. All he, Red Team and the rest of Blue Team could do was ensure that the situation was the opposite on the ground.

"Still stargazing?" came a voice. The Master Chief turned to see Kelly, known as Blue 2 for this operation, coming over.

"You could say that," the Chief murmured. He knew that distractions were an indulgence for the most part, but given that at this point in time they could do little but wait for the grunt horde that had massacured the 105th Drop Jet Platoon. The sooner the dog like aliens turned up, the better. Waiting was often the hardest part of any mission.

Kelly stood next to the Chief and looked up at the night sky too, the explosions reflecting off her visor. "I guess this proves that pessimistic saying," she said.

"Hmm?"

"The Covenant proves that humanity is nothing but an infant straying too far from its cradle."

The Chief snorted mentally; obviously a play on the words of Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, a Russian aviation engineer of the early 20th century who worked on the theory of multistage rockets. "Earth is the cradle of humanity but one cannot stay in the cradle forever. It wasn't something that Deja would have taught them and it didn't have much practical use but Cassandra-102 had always had a love of general knowlage and somehow gained access to it, sharing it with him.

"Is that how you feel?" the Chief asked. He knew that he shouldn't get so distracted but his motion sensor was reliable. They'd know when the grunts arrieved.

Kelly shrugged; "It's not really my place to say, is it? Who's to say there's an answer?"

The Chief's fears were being confirmed-Kelly, like many of his squad mates had lost the spark of curiosity. He remembered when they'd watched the stars together back on Reach, how Kelly seemed reluctant to speculate on the nature of extraterrestrial life. He paid it little heed at the time, but years later, he could see that it had foreshadowed the path that she and many Spartans would take.

Perhaps he would have gone down the same path too. Still, he always remembered the conversation he'd had with Mendez on the _Atlas_, how he realised that some answers could only be created by those asking the question, rather than delivered. He turned to face Kelly, putting a hand on her shoulder;

"Don't be afraid to find one for yourself," he said firmly.

"Er, pardon?" Kelly wondered what he was talking about. Their squad leader was known for being straight to the point and determined to get the job done. It was one of the many qualities he posessed that she admired him for.

"If we lose our natural curiosity we become less human. Don't let that happen."

Curiosity? Kelly remembered that she'd once had something akin to that in the past although it was little more than a dream. Perhaps in her former life, but that was little more than a dream.

Wait, hadn't she felt something like that when she and John watched the stars together back at Reach? It was strange; she did indeed wonder what was out there, but such feelings felt…repressed, somehow. But the sense of wonder…it was good, fulfilling. Almost as much as the sense of satisfaction that fighting the Covenant gave her.

"Perhaps you're right," said Kelly slowly. "But isn't curiosity an indulgence?"

"It depends how it's applied," said John. "Don't be too reluctant to do so." It was at this point that their motion sensors began picking up movement-the grunts had arrieved. The Chief gave Kelly a nod and turned, ready to contact the other teams. Before doing so however, Kelly placed a hand on his shoulder;

"I won't be."


End file.
